ON DARFUR_ PART THREE!

For Immediate Release: 01/08/07

Amnesty International today welcomed last night's unanimous vote by the UN Security Council to send a newly strengthened African Union-United Nations force to Darfur in Sudan but warned that the force must be deployed urgently, resourced effectively and be given the full support of the Sudanese Government.
"Hundreds of thousands have died because of the conflict in Darfur and more than two million people have been driven from their homes. The truth is the people of Darfur are living in the midst of a massive humanitarian and human rights crisis. They can wait no longer for protection: it must be delivered immediately, effectively and with a full mandate to protect civilians from further violence," said Amnesty International's Secretary General Irene Khan
Yesterday's adoption by the UN Security Council of resolution 1769 gives some long awaited hope to the millions of Darfuris. But it is now essential that UN member states provide the resources necessary to swiftly deploy an effective force with a strong human rights component. This must include the capacity and authority to monitor and investigate human rights violations, including all cases of rape and other forms of sexual violence, and to report publicly on all human rights abuses.
Deployed in a region awash with arms, the United Nations must ensure the forces can oversee the disarmament and demobilization of government supported Janjawid militia. The new resolution only allows the force to monitor "whether any arms or related material are present in Darfur" and urgently needs to be strengthened.
Amnesty International also urges the UN Security Council to ensure that the current arms embargo is effectively enforced.
"Given the Sudanese Government's past record of obstructing such deployments, we urge the Government to facilitate the rapid deployment of the new force," said Irene Khan "The people of Darfur have been offered too many words and too many resolutions. Now is the time for effective action."

A NEWS ARTICLE BY: GLOBE FOR DARFUR

ON DARFUR_ PART TWO!

For Immediate Release: 02/08/07

Human Rights First welcomes the adoption of Resolution 1769 establishing the AU/UN Hybrid operation in Darfur (UNAMID) by the Security Council this Tuesday afternoon.

By acting unanimously, the members of the Security Council have demonstrated their strong commitment to end the ongoing violence in Darfur.
It is particularly important that the resolution gives the Hybrid operation a clear mandate for the protection of aid workers and civilians against armed attacks. The fact that UNAMID has been established under Chapter VII of the United Nations Charter and is expressly authorized to take the necessary action to prevent such attacks means that the Hybrid force will have the power to use armed force, including preventative force, should it prove necessary to implement that mandate.
HRF also welcomes the ambitious timetable fixed by the resolution for the deployment of UNAMID. The resolution, however, will not automatically change the bleak reality on the ground in Darfur, as it most likely will take more than a year for the Hybrid force to be fully deployed.
In the meantime, violence continues. The parties have yet to cease hostilities and respect their commitments to past ceasefire agreements. The Sudanese government has also failed to live up to its obligation to disarm its proxy militia, the Janjaweed. This is particularly problematic because the resolution fails to authorize the Hybrid operation to undertake such disarmament together with that of other rebel groups.
Therefore, it is critical that the international community exert forceful pressure on all parties to the conflict to engage fully and immediately in the peace process initiated by the UN and AU Special Envoys and to comply with resolution 1769 and all previous Security Council resolutions concerning the situation in Sudan.
The test of any resolution is its implementation. HRF will closely monitor the efforts of the United Nations and the Members of the Security Council to make it more than another empty promise to the people of Darfur.

A NEWS ARTICLE BY: GLOBE FOR DARFUR

ON DARFUR!

For Immediate Release: 06/08/07
Human Rights First welcomes the conclusion of the Arusha consultations, a three-day meeting ending today, in which rebel leaders and other important stakeholders came together to discuss how to advance the Darfur peace process. Coming on the heels of last week's U.N. Security Resolution committing to the deployment of peacekeeping troops in Darfur, the Arusha meeting was a useful next step in what promises to be a long road to peace in Darfur.
The purpose of the consultations was to allow rebel groups, particularly non-signatories to the Darfur Peace Agreement, to discuss their concerns and hopefully agree on a common pre-negotiating position. This meeting culminated in an agreement by rebel leaders to present a common platform at upcoming peace talks, to allow new participants to join the common platform, and to support ongoing U.N. consultations with affected groups.
While, according to the meeting summary released by special envoys from the U.N. and A.U., Jan Eliasson and Salim Salim, there is reason for renewed optimism, the foundation for a successful peace process has by no means been completely established.
Human Rights First welcomes the positive developments coming out of the meeting, but also has a number of concerns that must be addressed in order for the peace process to be effective:
A common platform among rebel groups on the issues of greatest concern-power-sharing, wealth-sharing, security arrangements, land/tribal land ownership rights and humanitarian issues-must be sufficiently detailed and concrete so that it does not fall apart upon closer examination;
Suleiman Jamous, humanitarian coordinator for the SLA and respected leader among a number of rebel groups, must be able to participate in the peace talks. Currently detained at a U.N. hospital in Kadugli, Suleiman Jamous must be freed and the Khartoum government must guarantee that they will not arrest him once he returns to Darfur;
Rebel groups and leaders who did not participate in the Arusha talks must be drawn in, including field commanders and various important factions such as the SLA/AW;
Violence between Arab factions constitutes a significant part of the killings on the ground recently, which means that there must be a strong effort to include Arab tribes in the consultation process.
A peace process that is not fully inclusive is destined to fail. Human Rights First will continue to monitor develops and advocate for concrete solutions leading to a sustainable peace in Darfur.

A NEWS ARTICLE BY: GLOBE FOR DARFUR

ISLAM REALLY NEEDS BIG REFORMATION IN THIS HUGE AND MODERN WORLD!

It is really shocking to note that fanatical Islamists are so vocal in their objective of expelling all the Jews or Hebraics from the Land of Israel. I believe that the state of Israel doesn't want to dominate the Middle East region as a place solely for the Jews or the Hebraics to reside by. The Islamic Arab statesmen should be the ones to explain why most of them behave in a way that the whole Middle East region only belongs to the Arabs. What about the Kurds, the Iranians, the Baluchis, the Egyptians, the Black Africans, the Armenians, the Azeris, the Georgians, the Berbers, the Turks, the Turkmen, the Pashtuns, the Samaritans, and, of course, the Jews? Such ethnic groups consider the Middle East region as their "regional homeland”.

Is today's Islam a religion of peace? While all the other religions in this world have progressed or evolved towards humanitarianism and tolerance, today's Islam is still embedded with so many tyrannical and despotic traditions. Today's Islam has become an actual threat that can destroy today's global system of cultural and trading interactions. Today's Islam has become a threat that can destroy this whole world. While all the other religions have matured, progressed and developed towards humanitarianism and tolerance, Islam's tyrannical and despotic traditions have remained intact and had become more ferocious. A Darwinist intellectual recommends the "outright abolition of Islam" as the solution to Islamic fanaticism in this world. I would rather prefer the "reformation of Islam" towards humanitarianism and tolerance. But the Darwinist solution against Islam may still come into play, that is if such a religion had already become so violent to the point of having the upper hand in possessing the actual way of destroying this planet or world. Remember that the rational-thinking and wise human beings of this world have the right to defend this planet from despots and criminals who would want to dominate and destroy this whole world. Such is called the righteous defense of humanity and of this world from criminal aggressions. Even the Israelis have their right or righteous task to defend their national homeland from the criminal aggressions of their would-be invaders. Such things are really obvious.



The following article was derived from the autumn edition of the Year-2002 City Journal On- Line:

The Reform Islam Needs

By James Q. Wilson

We are engaged in a struggle to defeat terrorism. I have no advice on how to win that struggle, but I have some thoughts as to why it exists. It is not, I think, because Islam is at war with the West or because Palestinians are trying to displace Israelis. The struggle exists, I think, because the West has mastered the problem of reconciling religion and freedom, while several Middle Eastern nations have not. The story of that mastery and that failure occupies several centuries of human history, in which one dominant culture, the world of Islam, was displaced by a new culture, that of the West.
Reconciling religion and freedom has been the most difficult political task most nations have faced. It is not hard to see why. People who believe that there is one set of moral rules superior to all others, laid down by God and sometimes enforced by the fear of eternal punishment, will understandably expect their nation to observe and impose these rules; to do otherwise would be to repudiate deeply held convictions, offend a divine being, and corrupt society. This is the view of many Muslims; it was also the view of Pope Leo XIII—who said in 1888 that men find freedom in obedience to the authority of God—and of the provost of Oriel College, Oxford, who wrote to a faculty member in 1848 that “you were not born for speculation” but to “serve God and serve man.” If you think that there is one God who expects people to confess beliefs, say prayers, observe fasts, and obtain sacraments, it would be impious, indeed scandalously wrong, to permit the state to ignore beliefs, prayers, fasts, and sacraments.
In furtherance of these views, Queen Mary executed 300 Protestants, England and France expelled Jews, Ferdinand and Isabella expelled from Spain both Moors and Jews, the Spanish Inquisition tortured and executed a few thousand alleged heretics, and books were destroyed and scholars threatened for advancing theologically incorrect theories.
During this time, Islam was a vast empire stretching from western Africa into India—an empire that valued learning, prized scholars, maintained great libraries, and preserved the works of many ancient writers. But within three centuries, this greatest civilization on the face of the earth was in retreat, and the West was rising to produce a civilization renowned for its commitment to personal liberty, scientific expertise, political democracy, and free markets.
Freedom of conscience has made the difference. In an old world where knowledge came from libraries, and scientific experiments were rare, freedom would not be so important. But in the new world, knowledge and all that it can produce come from the sharp challenge of competing ideas tested by standards of objective evidence. In Istanbul, Muslims printed no book until 1729, and thereafter only occasionally. By contrast, the West became a world in which books were published starting three centuries earlier and where doubt and self-criticism were important. Of course, doubt and self-criticism can become, as William Bennett has observed, a self-destructive fetish, but short of that calamity, they are the source of human progress.
The central question is not why freedom of conscience failed to come to much of Islam but why it came at all to the West. Though Westerners will conventionally assign great weight to the arguments made by the defenders of freedom, I do not think that the ideas of Milton, Locke, Erasmus, and Spinoza—though important—were decisive.
What made religious toleration and later freedom of conscience possible in England was not theoretical argument but political necessity. It was necessary, first in England and later in America and much of Europe, because rulers trying to govern nations could not do so without granting freedom to people of different faiths. In the words of Herbert Butterfield, toleration was “the last policy that remained when it had proved impossible to go on fighting any longer.”
The fighting occurred because different religions struggled to control nations. Here lay the chief difference between Islam and the West: Islam was a land of one religion and few states, while the West was a land of many states that were acquiring many religions. In the sixteenth century, people in England thought of themselves chiefly as Englishmen before they thought of themselves as Protestants, and those in France saw themselves as Frenchmen before they saw themselves as Catholics. In most of Islam—in Arabia and northern Africa, certainly—people saw themselves as Muslims before they thought of themselves as members of any state; indeed, states hardly existed in this world until European colonial powers created them by drawing somewhat arbitrary lines on a map.
The Muslim faith was divided into the Sunni and the Shiite; but Christianity was soon divided into four branches. The Protestant Reformation created not only Lutheranism but its archrival, Calvinism, which now joined the Roman Catholic and Greek Orthodox Churches.
Lutherans, like Catholics, were governed by a priesthood, but Calvinists were ruled by congregations, and so they proclaimed not only a sterner faith but a distinctive political philosophy. The followers of Luther and Calvin had little interest in religious liberty; they wanted to replace a church they detested with one that they admired. But in doing so, they helped bring about religious wars. Lutheran mobs attacked Calvinist groups in the streets of Berlin, and thousands of Calvinists were murdered in the streets of Paris. In 1555, the Peace of Augsburg settled the religious wars briefly with the phrase cuius regio, eius religio—meaning that people in each state or principality would have the religion of their ruler. If you didn’t like your prince’s religion, you had to move somewhere else.
But the problem grew worse as more dissident groups appeared. To the quarrels between Catholics, Calvinists, and Lutherans were added challenges from Anabaptists, Quakers, and Unitarians. These sects had their own passionate defenders, and they helped start many struggles. And so wars broke out again, all advancing religious claims overlaid with imperial, dynastic, and material objectives.
In France, Catholics killed 20,000 Huguenots, 3,000 in Paris alone. When the Peace of Westphalia settled the wars of the sixteenth century in 1648, it reaffirmed the old doctrine of following the religion of your ruler, but added an odd new doctrine that required some liberty of conscience. As C. V. Wedgwood put it, men had begun to grasp “the essential futility of putting the beliefs of the mind to the judgment of the sword.”
In England, people were both exhausted by war and worried about following a ruler’s orders on matters of faith. Oliver Cromwell, the leader of the successful Presbyterian revolt against the king, was a stern believer in his own faith, but he recognized that his beliefs alone would not enable him to govern; he had to have allies of other faiths. He persuaded Parliament to allow liberty “to all who fear God,” provided they did not disturb the peace, and he took steps to readmit Jews into the country and to moderate attacks on the Quakers.
When Cromwell’s era ended and Charles II took the throne, he brought back with him his Anglican faith, and challenged this arrangement. After he died, James II came to the throne and tried to reestablish Roman Catholicism. When William of Orange invaded the country from Holland in 1688, James II fled, and in time William and his wife, Mary, became rulers. Mary, a Protestant, was the daughter of James II, a Catholic. A lot of English people must have wondered how they were supposed to cope with religious choice if a father and daughter in the royal family could not get the matter straight.
The following year, Parliament passed the Toleration Act, allowing dissident Protestant sects to practice their religion. Their members still could not hold government office, but at least they would not be hanged. The Toleration Act did not help Catholics and Unitarians, but as is so often the case in British law, their religious practices, while not protected by formal law, were allowed by administrative discretion.
Even so, the idea of a free conscience did not advance very much; after all, “toleration” meant that a preferred or established religion, out of its own kindness, allowed other religions to exist—but not to do much more. And William’s support for the Toleration Act probably had a lot to do with economic motives. Tolerance, he is supposed to have said, was essential to commercial success: England would acquire traders, including many Jews, from nations that still practiced persecution.
The Toleration Act began a slow process of moderating the political impact of organized religion. Half a century before it was passed, Galileo, tried by the Roman Inquisition for believing that Earth moved around the Sun, was sentenced to house arrest. But less than a century after the law was adopted, Adam Smith wrote a much praised book on morality that scarcely mentioned God, and less than a century after that, Charles Darwin published books that denied God a role in human evolution, a claim that profoundly disturbed his religious critics but neither prevented his books from being wildly popular nor deterred the Royal Society of London from bestowing on him its royal medal.
Toleration in the American colonies began slowly but accelerated rapidly when our country had to form a nation out of diverse states. The migration of religious sects to America made the colonies a natural breeding ground for religious freedom, but only up to a point. Though Rhode Island under the leadership of Roger Williams had become a religiously free colony, six colonies required their voters to be Protestants, four asked citizens to believe in the divine inspiration of the Bible, one required belief in the Trinity and two in heaven and hell, and five had an officially established church. Massachusetts was a theocracy that punished (and on a few occasions executed) Quakers. Maryland was created as a haven for Catholics, but their freedom began to evaporate as Protestants slowly gained the upper hand.
America in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries had many religions and some tolerance for dissenting views, but not until the colonists tried to form a national union did they squarely face the problem of religious freedom. The 13 colonies, in order to become a nation, had to decide how to manage the extraordinary diversity of the country. The colonists did so largely by writing a constitution that was silent on the question of religion, except to ban any “religious test” as a requirement for holding federal office.
When the first Congress adopted the Bill of Rights, it included the odd and much disputed ban on passing a law “respecting an establishment of religion.” The meaning of that phrase is a matter of scholarly speculation. James Madison’s original proposal was that the First Amendment ban “any national religion,” and in their first drafts the House and Senate agreed. But when the two branches of Congress turned over their slightly different language to a conference committee, its members, for reasons that no one has satisfactorily explained, chose to ban Congress from passing a law “respecting” a religion.
The wall between church and state, as Jefferson called it in a letter he wrote many years later, turned out to be controversial and porous, as Philip Hamburger’s masterful new book, The Separation of Church and State, shows. But it did guarantee that in time American politics would largely become a secular matter. And that is the essence of the issue. Politics made it necessary to establish free consciences in America, just as it had in England. This profound change in the relationship between governance and spirituality was greatly helped by John Locke’s writings in England and James Madison’s in America, but I suspect it would have occurred if neither of these men had ever lived.
There is no similar story to be told in the Middle Eastern parts of the Muslim world. With the exception of Turkey (and, for a while, Lebanon), every country there has been ruled either by a radical Islamic sect (as with the Taliban in Afghanistan and the mullahs in Iran) or by an autocrat who uses military power to enforce his authority in a nation that could not separate religion and politics or by a traditional tribal chieftain, for whom the distinction between church and state was meaningless. And the failure to make a theocracy work is evident in the vast popular resistance to the Taliban and the Iranian mullahs.
But where Muslims have had to end colonial rule and build their own nation, national identity has trumped religious uniformity. When the Indonesians threw off Dutch rule and later struggled to end communist influence, they did so in a way that made the creation and maintenance of an Indonesian nation more important than religious or political identity. India, home to more Muslims than much of the Middle East, also relied on nationalism and overcoming British rule to insist on the creation of one nation. Its constitution prohibits discrimination based on religion and promises the free exercise of religious belief.
In the Middle East, nations are either of recent origin or uncertain boundaries. Iraq, once the center of great ancient civilizations, was conquered by the Mongols and the Ottoman Turks, then occupied by the British during the First World War, became a League of Nations protectorate, was convulsed by internal wars with the Kurds, torn apart by military coups, and immersed in a long war with Iran. Syria, a land with often-changing borders, was occupied by an endless series of other powers—the Hittites, Egyptians, Assyrians, Greeks, Romans, Arabs, Mongols, Ottoman Turks, and the French. After Syria became a self-governing nation in 1944, it was, like Iraq, preoccupied with a series of military coups, repeated wars with Israel, and then, in 1991, with Iraq. Meanwhile, Lebanon, once part of Syria, became an independent nation, though it later fell again under Syrian domination.
These countries today are about where England was in the eleventh century, lacking much in the way of a clear national history or stable government. To manage religion and freedom, they have yet to acquire regimes in which one set of leaders could be replaced in an orderly fashion with a new set, an accomplishment that in the West required almost a millennium. Though many Middle Eastern countries are divided between two Muslim sects, the Sunni and the Shiites, coping with this diversity has so far been vastly less important than the still-incomplete task of finding some basis for asserting and maintaining national government.
Moreover, the Muslim religion is quite different from Christianity. The Qur’an and the hadith contain a vast collection of sacred laws, which Muslims call shari’a, that regulates many details of the public as well as private lives of believers. It sets down rules governing charity, marriage, orphans, fasting, gambling, vanity, pilgrimages, infidelity, polygamy, incest, divorce, modesty, inheritances, prostitution, alcohol consumption, collecting interest, and female dress.
By contrast, the Christian New Testament has rather few secular rules, and these are best remembered as a reaffirmation of the Ten Commandments as modified by the Sermon on the Mount. One can grasp the whole of Jesus’ moral teachings by recalling only two things: love God, and love your neighbor as yourself.
As Bernard Lewis has pointed out, the differences between the legal teachings of the two religions may have derived from, and were certainly reinforced by, the differences between Muhammad and Jesus. In the seventh century, Muhammad was invited to rule Medina and then, after a failed effort to conquer Mecca, finally entered that city as its ruler. He was not only a prophet but also a soldier, judge, and governor. Jesus, by contrast, was an outsider, who neither conquered nor governed anyone, and who was put to death by Roman rulers. Christianity was not recognized until Emperor Constantine adopted it, but Muhammad, in Lewis’s words, was his own Constantine.
Jesus asked Christians to distinguish between what belonged to God and what belonged to Caesar. Islam made no such distinction; to it, Allah prescribed the rules for all of life, encompassing what we now call the religious and the secular spheres. If a Christian nation fails, we look to its political and economic system for an explanation, but when a Muslim state fails, it is only because, as V. S. Naipaul put it, “men had failed the faith.” Disaster in a Christian nation leads to a search for a new political form; disaster in a Muslim one leads to a reinvigoration of the faith.
Christianity began as a persecuted sect, became a tolerated deviance, and then joined with political powers to become, for well over a thousand years, an official religion that persecuted its rivals. But when officially recognized religions stood in the way of maintaining successful nations, Christianity slipped back to what it had once been: an important faith without political power. And in these extraordinary changes, little in the religion was altered, because almost none of it imposed secular rules.
Judaism differs from Christianity in that it supplies its followers with a religious doctrine replete with secular rules. In the first five books of the Bible and in the Talmud, many of these rules are set forth as part of a desire, as stated in Exodus, to create “a holy nation” based on a “kingdom of priests.” In the five books of Moses and the Talmud are rules governing slavery, diet, bribery, incest, marriage, hygiene, and crime and punishment. And many of the earliest Jewish leaders, like Muhammad later, were political and military leaders. But as Daniel Pipes has noted, for two millennia Jews had no country to rule and hence no place in which to let religion govern the state. And by the time Israel was created, the secular rules of the Old Testament and the desire to create “a holy nation” had lost their appeal to most Jews; for them, politics had simply become a matter of survival. Jews may once have been attracted to theocracy, but they learned from experience that powerful states were dangerous ones.
Like the Old Testament, the Qur’an is hard to interpret. One can find phrases that urge Muslims to “fight and slay the pagans” and also passages that say there should be “no compulsion in religion.” The Arabic word jihad means “striving in the path of God,” but it can also mean a holy war against infidels and apostates.
Until the rise of modern Islamic fundamentalism, there were efforts by many scholars to modernize the Qur’an by emphasizing its broadest themes more than its narrow rules. Fazlur Rahman, a leading Islamic scholar, sought in the late 1970s and early 1980s to establish a view of the Qur’an based on Muhammad’s teaching that “differences among my community are a source of blessing.” The basic requirement of the Qur’an, Rahman wrote, is the establishment of a social order on a moral foundation that would aim at the realization of egalitarian values. And there is much in the Qur’an to support this view: it constrained the rules permitting polygamy, moderated slavery, banned infanticide, required fair shares for wives and daughters in bequests, and allowed slaves to buy their freedom—all this in the name of the central Islamic rule: command good and forbid evil.
But many traditional Islamic scholars insist that only the shari’a can govern men, even though it is impossible to manage a modern economy and sustain scientific development on the basis of principles set down in the seventh century. Bernard Lewis tells the story of a Muslim, Mirza Abu Talib, who traveled to England in the late eighteenth century. When he visited the House of Commons, he was astonished to discover that it debated and promulgated laws and set the penalties for criminals. He wrote back to his Muslim brethren that the English, not having accepted the divine law, had to make their own.
Of course, Muslim nations do legislate, but in many of them it is done furtively, with jurists describing their decisions as “customs,” “regulations,” or “interpretations.” And in other nations, the legislature is but an amplification of the orders of a military autocrat, whose power, though often defended in religious terms, comes more from the barrel of a gun than from the teachings of the prophet.
All this makes even more remarkable the extraordinary transformation of Turkey from the headquarters of the Ottoman Empire to the place where Muslims are governed by Western law. Mustafa Kemal, now known as Atatürk, came to power after the First World War as a result of his success in helping defeat the British at Gallipoli and attacking other invading forces. For years, he had been sympathetic to the pro-Western views of many friends; when he became leader of the country, he argued that it could not duplicate the success of the West simply by buying Western arms and machines. The nation had to become Western itself.
Over the course of a decade or so, Atatürk proclaimed a new constitution, created a national legislature, abolished the sultan and caliph, required Muslims to pray in Turkish and not Arabic, urged the study of science, created a secular public education system, abolished religious courts, imposed the Latin alphabet, ended the practice of allowing divorce simply at the husband’s request, gave women the vote, adopted the Christian calendar, did away with the University of Istanbul’s theology faculty, created commercial legal codes by copying German and Swiss models, stated that every person was free to choose his own religion, authorized the erection of statues with human likenesses, ended the ban on alcohol (Atatürk liked to drink), converted the mosque of Hagia Sophia into a secular museum, authorized the election of the first Turkish beauty queen, and banned the wearing of the fez.
You may imagine that this last decision was over a trivial matter, but you would be wrong. The fez, the red cap worn by many Turks, conveyed social standing and, because it lacked a brim, made it possible for its wearer to touch the ground with his forehead when saying prayers. Western hats, equipped with brims, made this impossible. When the ban on the fez was announced, riots erupted in many Turkish cities, and some 20 leaders were executed.
Atatürk created the machinery (though not the fact) of democracy and made it clear that he wanted a thoroughly secular state. After his death, real democratic politics began to be practiced, as a result of which some of the anti-Islam laws were modified. Even so, no other Middle Eastern Muslim nation has undergone as dramatic a change. In the rest of the region, autocrats still rule; they deal with religion by either buying it off or allowing it to dominate the spiritual order, provided it keeps its hands off real power.
On occasion, a fundamentalist Islamic regime comes to power, as happened in Iran, Afghanistan, and the Sudan. But these regimes have failed, ousted from Afghanistan by Western military power and declining in Iran and Sudan owing to economic incompetence and cultural rigidity.
The touchstones for Western success in reconciling religion and freedom were nationalism and Christianity, two doctrines that today many sophisticated people either ignore or distrust. But then they did not have to spend four centuries establishing freedom of conscience. We are being optimistic if we think that, absent a unique ruler such as Atatürk and a rare opportunity such as a world war, the Middle East will be able to accomplish this much faster.
Both the West and Islam face major challenges that emerge from their ruling principles. When the West reconciled religion and freedom, it did so by making the individual the focus of society, and the price it has paid has been individualism run rampant, in the form of weak marriages, high rates of crime, and alienated personalities. When Islam kept religion at the expense of freedom, it did so by making the individual subordinate to society, and the price it has paid has been autocratic governments, religious intolerance, and little personal freedom.
I believe that in time Islam will become modern, because without religious freedom, modern government is impossible. I hope that in time the West will reaffirm social contracts, because without them a decent life is impossible. But in the near term, Islam will be on the defensive culturally—which means it will be on the offensive politically. And the West will be on the offensive culturally, which I suspect means it will be on the defensive morally.
If the Middle East is to encounter and not merely resist modernity, it would best if it did this before it runs out of oil.

_____________________________

SO TRUE! I AGREE!

FOR THE GLOBALIZATION OF DEMOCRACY!

The modern world that we reside in is a world of diversity. The reality of diversity in this world and in the universe is an eternal reality. I believe that democracy is the only socio-political system in this world that is an accordance with all of the natural, universal and moral laws and principles. Why? The system of checks and balances, as well as the secured guarantees to safeguard the human rights and civil liberties in a democratic constitution, and the harmonization of a society under proper rules and guidelines that reflect the need of humanity to be in harmony with nature and universe do point to the reality that democracy is the only socio-political system in this world that is in accordance with the natural, universal and moral laws and principles. So, I believe that every nation, every social organization and every culture in this world should peacefully and lawfully embrace real and moral democracy. I have these advocacies called "political abrogationism" and "social harmonicalism" that endorse the peaceful and lawful struggle for this whole world to gain real, global and moral democracy. To know more about the advocacies called political abrogationism and social harmonicalism, the readers of this topic can just click this web page now: http://www.geocities.com/esabon/POLITICAL_ABROGATIONERS.html . Such web page will give the readers of this topic further details about those mentioned advocacies. So, please click such web page now.

STILL ON REFORMING THE ELITIST AND SEMI-FEUDAL ELECTORAL SYSTEM IN THE PHILIPPINES!

I really believe that the current batch of COMELEC officials in the Philippines are able administrators. Such officials are effective managers of an important aspect of democracy- the supervision of a political election. But the current batch of COMELEC officials under Benjamin Abalos are being pressured by the various sectors of the Philippine society to make way for reforms in the current electoral system in the country. Reforming the electoral system in this country is really a hard task to do. First, the public must understand that the current batch of COMELEC officials are humans just like us. We can not expect Mr. Abalos and his batch-mates at the COMELEC officialdom to make sweeping reforms without the assistance of all the sectors of our society. If the current batch of COMELEC officials will reform the electoral system in the country on its own, such can be termed as a little bit despotic due to the fact that such group is not a representative coalition nor expression of all the sectors of the Philippine society. Besides, the COMELEC is not a "super-power group" that can easily overcome all the hindrances that may come along the way of reforming the electoral system in the Philippines. COMELEC has limited functions and powers when it comes to supervising elections in the country. Therefore, all the sectors of the Philippine society should assist and aid the COMELEC in reforming the electoral system of this country.. Another thing is that the legislative branch of the Philippine government must be at the forefront of such reformation. Why? It's because the reforms that will be introduced in the electoral system of this country have to become binding, so that such changes will really be effective in the future. In other words, the would-be reforms in our electoral system have to be passed as laws and decrees by our legislators, so that such changes will be functioning and become binding in the near future. We should hope that before the year 2010 presidential election comes around, all the sectors of the Philippine society would have already reformed the Philippine electoral system as a true expression and representative will of the Filipino people. I hope that before the 2010 presidential election comes in, elitism and political warlord-ism in Philippine politics would have been curtailed, if not completely eliminated, already.

I don't believe that the current batch of actual administrators of the COMELEC had been involved in any form of election-cheating mobilization. As I've said, I truly believe that Mr. Abalos and his batch-mates are all effective administrators of the COMELEC. The problem is that Mr. Abalos and his batch-mates have not seriously made efforts to make a full investigation of the Hello-Garci scandal. I do praise Abalos and his batch-mates for fully investigating the serious cheating allegations and poll irregularities in the recently-held mid-year elections in the country. But, still, in order to counter the public perception that the current COMELEC officialdom has been too lazy in properly investigating the Hello-Garci Controversy, Mr. Abalos and his batch-mates should make a full-scale investigation and recommendation for resolving such electoral controversy. Doing such a thing would make Mr. Abalos and his batch-mates at the COMELEC officialdom become truly-heroic in the historic efforts to reform the elitist and political-warlords’ dominated politics in our country.

The current COMELEC officialdom has to be praised for standing firm on its position to hold a special election at Magindanao province. That is the only way to clean the obvious poll irregularities that took place at Maguindanao during the May 14, 2007 elections in the Philippines. Mr. Koko Pimentel should just allow the people of Magindanao to make their general will become known to our nation. What if Koko Pimentel gets defeated at Maguindanao? So what? The important thing is to cleanse the province of Magindanao from the poll irregularities that took place there during the mid-year elections in this country. The important thing is to know what was the "true expression" of the people of Maguindanao during the May 14, 2007 elections in the Philippines. Besides, if a special election will push through in Maguindanao this month, Koko Pimentel has still a chance to make a "last-day election campaign" at Magindanao if he will request it at the COMELEC. The peaceful and lawful struggle to reform the elitist and semi-feudal electoral system in the Philippines should go on.

POLL IRREGULARITIES IN THE SOUTHERN PHILIPPINES!

Lanao del Sur and Maguindanao are just neighboring provinces in Mindanao. The said provinces were suspected to be the key areas where most cheatings in the year 2004 Philippines presidential election occurred. Those 2 provinces are now again controversial. The reported cheatings in the recently-held 2007 general elections in the Philippines had been widely seen as systematic in the said provinces. The total population of voters in Lanao del Sur is said to around 400,000. Maguindanao has around 200, 0000 voters. But the said figures coming from a pro-administration organization may have been bloated. For one, those provinces have serious-insurgency-related problems that can hinder the voters in exercising their right to suffrage. The local insurgents in those areas are known to be as anti-elections’ advocates. So, the numbers of actual voters in those said provinces are much, much lower than the mentioned figures. And many voters in those provinces usually don’t vote for the national positions. The majority of voters there only vote for their local government officials. They usually leave the list for national candidates as blank. And it can’t be denied that feudal warlords still dominate the local politics of such said provinces. Wielding gold, guns and goons, the semi-feudal warlords in those areas can easily threaten the registered voters there. The Team Unity brags about the “fact” that Maguindanao can deliver a 12-0 victory for them during the campaign-period before the May 14 Elections. The statistical probability of such a victory in the whole province of Maguindanao is below 47 percent. The reason is that Maguindanao has a serious insurgency problem that reflects anti-government sentiments among many of the province’s folks. It is improbable and impossible for any national political party to get a straight ticket to victory in a province that has a serious insurgency problem. So, how come Team Unity was able to get a 12-0 win in the whole province of Maguindanao? That is magic! With the given political conditions, as mentioned in the beginning of this article, in Lanao del Sur and Maguindanao, it would be easy for the “election-terrorists” to subvert the people’s will in those provinces. In other words, the election- cheating machineries in Lanao del Sur and Maguindanao had created wonders for the Team Unity Party.


The following was an article, dated May 16, 2007, from The Asia Foundation or known in the web as Asia Foundation. Org.:

In the Philippines: Elections in Mindanao
Philippines May 16, 2007
By Steven Rod

Steven Rood is The Asia Foundation’s Country Representative in the Philippines.
“On Monday, May 14th, Filipinos voted for 17,889 different government positions at different levels, none of which included the office of President. For more than 50 years, Mindanao has had a reputation within the Philippines as having the worst electoral processes in the country. The unresolved issues about the 2004 election revolve mostly around alleged cheating that took place in various places in the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (ARMM). The regional Governor in the ARMM was quoted on Election Day 2007 as saying that “what is important is we can rectify the negative impression that here in the ARMM, there is cheating.” And the “ulama” (religious leaders) have said that people must “rise against the sarcastic perception that the ARMM is the ‘cheating capital for elections.’”
Muslim citizen response this time around was quite vigorous. In early April, twelve Muslim organizations (ranging from region-wide coalitions like Citizens Coalition for ARMM Electoral Reforms and the Consortium of Bangsamoro Civil Society, to province-based organizations like MARADECA in Lanao del Sur and Electoral Reform Advocates in Tawi-Tawi) met with the Catholic-based Parish Pastoral Council for Responsible Voting (PPCRV). PPCRV is the national organization accredited by the Commission on Elections (COMELEC) as its “Citizen’s Arm,” but is naturally weakest in Muslim areas of the country. Thus, the agreement to work for “Clean, Honest, Accurate, Meaningful, Peaceful Elections” helped fill a gap in PPCRV’s coverage of all precincts throughout the country.
The Asia Foundation, with funding support from the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA), partnered with the Asian Network for Free Elections (ANFREL) to bring 21 Asian election observers from Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Malaysia, Thailand, and Indonesia to the ARMM. Partnering with local organizations, they spread out across the ARMM for eight days, interviewing candidates, local officials, COMELEC, police, military, citizens, and non-government organizations. On Election Day, they visited more than 500 precincts. One of the most valuable aspects of such a mission is the reactions of the observers to many things that Filipinos normally take for granted.
The comment that hit the headlines, by Somsri Hananuntasuk (Director of ANFREL) was that the situation was worse than Afghanistan. Perhaps influenced by the fact that a small bomb went off at a precinct she was visiting early in the day, and that she later encountered armed men hustling ballot boxes around accompanied by tanks and a Mayor she described as a “warlord,” her reaction succinctly summarized the feelings of many other observers.
A Malaysian observer who had extricated himself from between two groups of armed followers of competing politicians pointed to the fact that Malaysia has had 50 years of electoral politics without any political killings. He also laughingly said that Philippine elections were not “Free” – in fact they were quite expensive. Another Malaysian, mistaken for a local in Tawi-Tawi, indignantly watched as votes were bought (or at least paid for) quite openly. A Bangladeshi observer (who had also been near the early morning explosion) remarked that she had no idea how Filipinos chose for whom to vote, since no platforms or programs were on offer. And the Indonesians, noting the proliferation of campaign materials at voting stations on Election Day, proudly pointed to the practice in their country of using the day before the election to scrub the locality clean of posters.
Listening to this litany of woes, one is struck by the fact that none of the complaints uniquely characterizes the ARMM. As readers of this series know, we track the number of killings nationwide (currently at 130, with a month of tense “canvassing” [aggregating totals]) to go. In fact, the ARMM did not have a disproportionate number of killings in this election. As for programmatic content, the inclusion of actor and talented film producer Cesar Montano in the administration’s Team Unity senatorial slate had nothing to do with any detailed platform of government. Campaign materials are illegally placed or handed out in voting precincts all over the country. And throughout the country the secrecy of the ballot can be called into question as flimsy “ballot secrecy folders” (file folders that are supposed to block the view of prying eyes) are insufficient. As one observer not in Mindanao noted, “we saw voters curling their paper ballots in an attempt to prevent partisan poll watchers seeing their choices.”
What is unique to ARMM, and ought not be glossed over, is the fact that conflict among clans for political power regularly overwhelms the electoral system. The overwhelming majority of voters in areas with “failed elections” are in the ARMM. In one well-televised incident, the COMELEC and security forces were not able to overcome objections by an incumbent mayor to the distribution of election paraphernalia in his municipality – the protesters were led by his mother who sat on the pile of ballot boxes in the COMELEC office and so the people in that community did not get to cast a vote.
In fact, Asia Foundation research has shown that the main source of violent conflict in Muslim Mindanao is not separatism but clan feuds. This problem is worse in ARMM than anywhere else in the country, and political disputes are the main factors initiating conflict among clans. While elections throw this dynamic into sharp relief, such feuding is a constant reality and no amount of change in election procedures (no matter how much such reform might benefit Philippine democracy) will change that.
It is only when followers are able to exact accountability from their leaders for peace and development that this will change. How residents of the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao might accomplish this is a difficult, though not impossible, question.”

But the people of ARMM should help in legally eradicating all the election-cheating machineries in such a region. That is one step forward towards progress.....

THE REPORTED CHEATINGS THAT TOOK PLACE IN THE YEAR 2007 NATIONAL ELECTION IN THE PHILIPPINES!!

THE FOLLOWING ARE EXCERPTS FROM THE MAY 21, 2007 REPORT OF THE KONTRA-DAYA (COUNTER-ELECTION FRAUD ALLIANCE) ABOUT THE RECENTLY-HELD NATIONAL ELECTION IN THE PHILIPPINES:

COMELEC Officials from the Garci Scandal

The COMELEC has resisted citizens’ demands for the investigation, or reassignment to less sensitive positions, of the election officials implicated in the Garci tapes. In fact, election official Rey Sumalipao, who had been implicated in the Garci tapes, was promoted to head COMELEC operations for the Autonomous Region of Muslim Mindanao (ARMM), an area where massive fraud is said to be already taking place.


Security of Election Documents

The COMELEC failed to ensure the security of accountable forms such as Election Returns and Certificates of Canvass. Just before Election Day, ABS-CBN senior correspondent Ricky Carandang reported on what appeared to be “genuine” Election Returns that had all the proper security markings. The documents were said to be for sale. There are persistent reports from the media about “fake” ER’s.

Early on in the campaign, Kontra Daya already warned that the presence of private printers producing ER’s would compromise the security of these election documents. The situation with private printers operated by private employees leaves materials such as papers, plates and/or films vulnerable for illegal printing and the commission of wholesale fraud. In the face of such a warning, and in light of the ensuing theft of the forms, the COMELEC and the National Printing Office cannot claim they have secured said forms. In fact, the theft underscores COMELEC’s (willful or unintended) negligence and dereliction of duty over the security of vital election documents.


Implementation of RA 9369

In the issue of the non-implementation of crucial provisions of R.A. 9369, particularly Section 39 (projection of canvassing), the COMELEC merely pointed out its lack of funds. No other explanation was given and no other effort to fully implement the law was seen.


Partylist Issues

In the case of questionable party list groups, Kontra Daya issued a list of 22 groups it believes were either created by or had links with Malacañang and the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP). Subsequently, a memorandum from the Office of the External Affairs (OEA), an office under the direct supervision of the Office of the President, surfaced. It revealed that one of OEA’s officials, who also happens to be a nominee of an administration-backed party list group, had requested funding from the Office of the President. The Supreme Court has also issued a decision for the COMELEC to release all the names of the nominees of party list groups that it had refused to divulge to the public.

Despite these developments, the Commission has not investigated or taken action against any of the party list groups and their nominees who clearly do not qualify as “marginalized groups” in accord with the spirit and the letter of the relevant constitutional provision on party lists. Inaction appears to be the standard response of the COMELEC to all demands for reforms and rectification.


The Role of the Military

The elections in 2007 are far, far worse than that of 2004 with regard to the AFP’s uncalled for and illegitimate involvement. The People’s International Observers Mission (PIOM), Task Force Poll Watch and Kontra Daya’s own election monitoring showed unacceptable patterns of intervention coming from military units and their officials. If in 2004 only some generals were involved in fraud (as revealed by the “Garci tapes”), in 2007 we can say that the entire chain of command was being used and manipulated for the purposes of fraud and violence.

The COMELEC has failed to stop the AFP from engaging in partisan political activities. Two of the most glaring examples are the AFP’s vilification campaign against militant party list groups and the AFP’s all-out support for administration bets and party list groups. The AFP in Metro Manila also attempted to clothe its smear campaign in the guise of a “voters’ education program,” a move immediately unmasked and opposed by various citizens’ groups.

There are persistent reports that high-ranking officials of the military are using the chain of command to force soldiers to vote for administration bets and party list groups. Fact-finding bodies like the PIOM noted that in Nueva Ecija, soldiers coerced people to vote for the Bantay partylist of Gen. Jovito Palparan. Media reports, on the other hand, also say that local absentee voting for soldiers were conducted under questionable conditions. Despite all these issues, the COMELEC has turned a blind eye to the blatant partisanship exhibited by the AFP and its officials.


Initial Conclusions

The 2007 elections are compromised by the COMELEC’s failure to ensure the credibility of the polls. At the least, it failed to dismantle the structural systems and conditions encouraging wholesale fraud. At most, it showed complicity with blatant acts of fraud and other violations of the Election Code. Even the traditional watchdog groups such as Namfrel and PPCRV, that are official citizens’ arms of the COMELEC, have carefully refrained from issuing statements absolving the COMELEC of election negligence, mismanagement or sabotage.

Kontra Daya raises these general statements on the 2007 elections:

1. There are initial indications that the Arroyo administration is engaged in large-scale electoral fraud in an attempt to secure favorable results for its candidates in the national elections (senatorial and party-list).

a. Throughout the campaign period and right up to Election Day, Malacanang led and directed a massive campaign of vote-buying for its candidates.

b. Malacanang has made partisan use of the military to campaign for administration candidates and against opposition groups especially the militant party lists.

c. In the ongoing period of counting and canvassing of votes, efforts to directly manipulate the election results in favor of Malacanang’s candidates and against the administration’s opponents (senatorial candidates and party-list groups) are underway.

2. COMELEC seems directly complicit with the Arroyo administration in perpetrating the ongoing electoral fraud.

a. At its highest level, the COMELEC issued statements, policies, and resolutions that were in accordance with the interests of Malacanang particularly in the Cayetano case, the Robredo disqualification, and the “Malacanang partylist” issue.

b. The COMELEC is suspected of laying the groundwork for electoral fraud which include among others the private printing of election forms, padded voters’ list, selective implementation of laws and the last-minute appointment of BEIs.

c. The COMELEC also aided and abetted fraud through its inaction on numerous blatant violations of election laws from the shameless vote-buying by administration officials to the blatant partisanship of the AFP.

d. The presence and promotion of election officers previously linked to fraud in Mindanao also shows complicity to commit fraud on the part of the COMELEC.

e. COMELEC chairman Abalos in particular makes it a point to rationalize if not cover up election-related anomalies which have come to light. He too is in a state of almost total denial when it comes to election fraud.

Two days after the elections, the Arroyo administration was quick to point out that an administration win at the local levels was a vote for “stability and progress”. COMELEC Chairman Benjamin Abalos also claimed that the elections were a “vindication” for the poll body.

Neither claim is generally accepted. The popular public sentiment right now is that the Arroyo administration is abetting election fraud and engaging in terror tactics in the provinces. Reports of vote-shaving and manipulation, bribery, military harassment and extrajudicial killings all cast serious doubt on the outcome of the elections.

The strong lead shown by the Opposition and militant partylist groups in the COMELEC count do not disprove fraud; rather it reveals a popular preference for them so strong it is overwhelming even the most proven fraud tactics during the canvass. The Opposition and the progressives are winning the count despite the cheating.


The following days will be crucial as the canvassing of votes continues and the possibility of wholesale fraud looms even more. Kontra Daya calls on the people to exercise heightened vigilance and to start sending a strong message to the COMELEC, the AFP and the Arroyo administration that electoral fraud in any form will be politically costly for this country_ the Philippines.

THE COMING MID-YEAR ELECTION!

It is election time once again here in the Philippines! I know that the Genuine Opposition is about to take the majority seats, that is both in the senate and congress, in the coming mid-year election. I just hope that such politicians who are about to become our law-makers will do their job properly. I’m also praying that the coming election here in the Philippines would be truly honest, credible and fair. The Comelec officials should work hand-in-hand with the senate and the congress in finding out ways to reform the political- election system here in the Philippines. The concerned sectoral groups here in our country should also participate in reforming the political-election system until all the basic institutions of Philippine democracy have been stabilized already………..

I’m also announcing to the whole world my intention to run for the Philippine presidential election in year 2010. That’s no joke! I will begin my "early" campaign for such a presidential election this year 2007. I’m going to run for such endeavor to campaign for real, global and moral democracy in this world. I’m going to start my presidential campaign right after the May 14 national election in the Philippines. Watch me do such a campaign in the coming days.

A REVIEW OF THE HELLO GARCI CONTROVERSY!!!!!

THE HELLO GARCI SCANDAL AND CONTROVERSY!!!!!
The following are excerpts from a Wikipedia article about the ‘Hello GARCI Controversy’ that rocked our country recently. The controversy has not yet been resolved.

From the Wikipedia:

Background

The scandal involves incumbent president Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo, who allegedly rigged the 2004 national election in her favor. The official results of that election gave Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo and Noli de Castro the presidency and vice-presidency, respectively. Hundreds of national and local positions were also contested during this election. The scandal and crisis began in June 2005 when audio recordings of a phone call conversation between President Arroyo and then COMELEC Commissioner Virgilio Garcillano allegedly talking about the rigging of the 2004 national election results, were released to the public. This escalated, when the minority of the lower house of Congress attempted to impeach Arroyo. This was blocked by Arroyo's coalition in September 2005. No trial has taken place thus far.
Samuel Ong, a former deputy director of the country's National Bureau of Investigation (NBI), declared in a June 10 press conference that he possessed original recordings of a wiretapped conversation between Arroyo and an official of the Commission on Elections, who was alleged to be Virgilio Garcillano. In the following weeks, the media analyzed contents of the tapes. The Ong recordings allegedly proved that Arroyo rigged the 2004 national election to maintain her presidency and the political success of her allies. Arroyo denied the accusations of election rigging in a television broadcast on June 27, but acknowledged that it was her voice on the tape. [3]Protests occurred frequently during the crisis either in favor or against Arroyo and her administration. Attempts to impeach Arroyo failed on September 6.
During the scandal, various polls and surveys conducted by Social Weather Stations, CNN/Time, and Pulse Asia measured public opinion regarding the allegations and other related issues.
According to a CNN/Time poll, 57.5 percent of the people surveyed said that Philippine President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo should not finish her term. [4]. A Pulse Asia survey released on Philippine news on July 12 showed that 57% of the people wanted incumbent president Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo to resign from office.
The Social Weather Stations or SWS June 28-30, 2005 Metro Manila poll results yielded that 59% say GMA told the Comelec official to cheat and 84% support full airing of tapes. In the same survey, President Arroyo received a rather poor net trust rating of -31 while the COMELEC's net trust rating was -27. [5]
According to the SWS July 12-14, 2005 Metro Manila Poll: GMA should resign, say 62%; or else she should be impeached, say 85%. President Arroyo's net trust rating was still poor at -33. [6] Incidentally, President Arroyo's net trust rating has stayed low (negative) since then.

Ong recordings

Two recordings were presented to the public: the Ong recordings and the government endorsed version of the recordings. Uncut copies of the Ong recordings managed to become widespread. The first recordings to be released to the press were used in the Congressional inquiry on the crisis. The second set of recordings, described by the government as the original, was more easily accessible in the Philippines as the government did not restrict the media from airing it. However, the media aired both sets, focusing on the Ong recordings.
Shortly after the scandal broke, Randy David, a nonpartisan columnist of the Philippine Daily Inquirer, cited two excerpts from the Ong recording in an article. Sheila Coronel, of the Philippine Center of Investigative Journalism, was able to decipher some of the garbled parts of the tape, which allegedly implicated Arroyo in the scandal. David analyzed the tapes using ethnomethodology and came to the same conclusions as did Coronel. His analysis described one of the speakers as a female coming across as a person speaking to her subordinate. Later, Arroyo acknowledged that it was her voice on the recording. However, no trial took place regarding Arroyo's intentions with her conversations in the recordings. According to Philippine law, both recordings are part of the public domain and are freely distributable.
In his editorial on June 12, 2005 for the Philippine Daily Inquirer [8], Randy David said,
"On the surface it does look like an innocent exchange. The key word here is "nagco-correspond"-a gloss that refers to the practice of fixing canvass results at, say, the provincial level so that they are not at variance with precinct election returns or statement of votes for municipalities. The other gloss is the question "Kumpleto?" This is not a harmless inquiry. Given the kind of response it elicits, it is an urgent demand to make sure the doctoring is done with care".
David described Arroyo's subordinate as a "man...not in the business of counting votes; he produces them."
Sheila Coronel, described not only electoral fraud, but also the involvement of the independent watchdog group Namfrel. In her analysis, Coronel alleged that corruption was clearly evident. [9] She also commented on the garbled portions of the tape, which were digitally enhanced for clarity. [10]. Allegedly, Arroyo whispered "Yung dagdag, yung dagdag" ("The addition, the addition"), implying fraud and mentioned Namfrel's sympathy for her. In her blog, she said,
"The conversations, after all, provide damning proof that Garcillano was, in the words of a Comelec official, “the plotter for electoral fraud, the overall supervisor and commander in chief” of the manipulation of the count in favor of the administration. The recording points to systemic and institutional fraud perpetrated by the Comelec. Does this mean that the President, by confirming her phone calls to the commissioner, also provided, albeit indirectly, a virtual confirmation of the fraud?"

Other evidence

After the Ong allegations surfaced, many others also claimed to have evidence of cheating by the Arroyo administration; however some of those facing the additional allegations have not been given opportunity to provide solid evidence. Rashma Hali, an electoral official from Basilan, who can claims that Arroyo is related to a kidnapping operation. Michael Zuce claimed that he was present in an incident where Arroyo allegedly bribed officials from the Commission on Elections. Retired general Francisco Gudani claimed that he can prove military involvement in Arroyo's alleged acts of electoral fraud. Roberto Verzola, leader of the Philippine Greens and an IT expert, also claimed that Gloria Macapagal Arroyo cheated and the citizens' election watchdog, National Movement for Free Elections (Namfrel) was also involved. Jay Carizo, from the Institute for Popular Democracy, developed the election cheating indicators. Other sources claimed fraud in several other government positions, as well as the murder of political opponents by incumbents. There were also eyewitness claims as well. Loren Legarda-Leviste also claimed that she had evidence of being cheated by Noli de Castro also won the vice presidency, in 2004.

Accountability and legitimacy

The evidence carried with it great consequences. The Ong tape were neutrally authenticated by foreign companies Uniquest (Australia) and Voice Identification (United States). Also, Arroyo's spokesman, Ignacio Bunye, as well as the president herself, acknowledged that it was indeed Arroyo's voice. The protesting public insisted that the tapes and CDs proved electoral fraud, and that Arroyo cheated and rigged the 2004 elections. A sizable number of people wanted the results of the 2004 elections to be made invalid. The Supreme Court withheld judgment on the matter, refraining from actions toward invalidating the election. The administration said the Ong recordings were inadmissible in court, since the audio was taped without consent.
Initially, there were two possible outcomes for the government; Arroyo could have either resigned or be ousted through a constitutionally accepted process. These actions could only take place after addressing the current state of the faulty electoral system. The other outcome was for Arroyo to be cleared of any wrong doing. Neither outcome occurred, and hence no final course of action was taken to resolve Arroyo's legitimacy or to prevent electoral fraud. Those unrealized possible outcomes could have resolved definitely the legitimacy issue, and could have made Arroyo accountable for any wrongdoing. However, Philippine law and the country's flawed electoral rules complicate the legitimacy and accountability problem. The law only mentions impeachment followed with a conviction as a possible way of removing certain serving legitimate government officials. The law however is unclear on how to prosecute and convict the sitting official if illegitimacy is the problem, due to allegations of vote rigging. Conrado de Quiros, a strong advocate of electoral reforms, argues that a special presidential election must be done in coinciding with midterm elections to resolve legitimacy. [2]
"It is not enough that the elections next year [2007 midterm elections] be turned into a referendum on Arroyo, it is imperative that the elections next year be turned into an occasion to vote for a real president."
"At the very least, a loud and universal call for special presidential elections next year will let it be known that we are serious about doing something about screwing the voters. No, more than that, about the deceitfulness and lying that are spreading everywhere in this country faster than karaoke. In the end, none of the safeguards against cheating will matter if there is no public vigilance against the threat and no outrage against the commission."
Whether the special presidential elections occurs or not, a significant number of incumbent politicians who are allied with administration and who were elected during the tainted 2004 elections may be deposed by voter backlash in the upcoming 2007 midterm elections, assuming the election to be free and fair. The electorate would use the upcoming election as a referendum on accountability and legitimacy for Arroyo and her political supporters. All of the seats of Arroyo's supporters in the House of Representatives, half of the Senate, and all local government positions are to be contested. De Quiros also describes this contest as a contest of "democracy vs. the cheaters". [3]

Electoral system

The Philippines, according to experts, has a reputation for having political issues based on patronage politics and personality politics. To some experts, what is unique about the crisis is that it addresses the greater issue of electoral fraud and an allegedly faulty election system that allows cheaters to win and get away with it. This is manifested in a humorous local saying that, "There are two types of people in elections. Those who win and those who get cheated out of office." Politically outspoken student groups mention that this is rather new for Philippine politics, and shows a gradual development of the voting public, the electorate.
According to pundits, the past 60 years of the Philippine history already has a reputation of electoral fraud, proven or otherwise. It is just that no one ever gets caught or punished. Analysts assert that the people have always been desensitized to their politicians cheating during elections. Accordingly, people generally doubt their leaders' mandates. The people are often suspicious of the winners, especially in close poll results, but do nothing. Constituents generally allow their leaders, assuming proven acts of cheating, to get away with it until the scandal erupted. Roberto Verzola supports punishing candidates guilty of fraud as the first step for electoral reforms. He said that, "the system can be slow or fast but there will still be cheating unless you punish the cheats." [4] The reforms sought for the electoral system are still clouded with uncertainty._______________WIKIPEDIA

The Filipino people, through the various sectors of the Philippine society, must truly ensure that the coming political election will be the true expression of the general will of the Filipino nation. The Philippines should have electoral reforms in and upon its own political system. The democratic institutions in the Philippines have to be revitalized. And the Philippine Comelec should do something…………….

THE RAGE AGAINST THE MACHINE!

The inset photo is a picture of the famous rock band called RAGE AGAINST THE MACHINE. The band is famous for its use of combining both the hip-hop and punk elements with its own style of “funky hard rock music”. RAGE AGAINST THE MACHINE is also known as a rock band which is involved in many activist and humanitarian causes. Among the advocacies that the band champions are children’s rights, gender equality, debt relief for all developing countries, environmentalism and a homeland for Native Americans- the American redskins or American Indians. The band is also known as “leftist-oriented” group, because its members are avowed socialists. RAGE AGAINST THE MACHINE vocally and loudly supports violent Marxist groups like the Zapatista guerillas in Mexico. I do admire such band’s use of peaceful and lawful means to campaign for the political causes that it advocates. But I don’t like the way it proposes certain Marxist-Communist agendas for a society. Marxist-Communist agendas lead to totalitarian or dictatorial take-over. I like some of the songs of such band. But I hope that someday such rock band will completely drop its championing of certain Marxist-Communist agendas.


I believe that democracy is the only socio-political system in the world that is compatible and in harmony with all of the natural, universal and moral principles. Hence, democracy is the only “natural socio-political system” in this world. Democracy is the only socio-political system in the world that guarantees a social contract for the protection, securing and ensuring of all known human rights and civil liberties of humanity. Hence, democracy is compatible with every political, economic and religious ideology in the world. Anything that degrades the idea of a social contract that guarantees all the known human rights and civil liberties is termed as “tyranny”. Hence, anything that is anti-democratic is labeled as a tyranny. Therefore, it is only proper to say that every country, every social organization (including the semi-religious and religious ones) and every culture in this world should peacefully and lawfully embrace real, global and moral democracy. The ideals of our groups- the LEAGUE OF POLITICAL ABROGATIONISTS and the COMMUNITIES’ ALLIANCE FOR REAL DEMOCRACY- can be read instantly by clicking this web page now: http://www.geocities.com/esabon/POLITICAL_ABROGATIONERS.html . The readers are free to view such web page now.


I also would like to “advertise” certain worthy global cause-oriented groups that are really helping this world to be a much better and a much humane place for humanity. The readers of this article can either join or give donations to these internationally well-known non-government orgs- the Amnesty International and The One Campaign. Amnesty International is involved with the global campaign to protect all known human rights of humanity. Amnesty International had already won a couple of Nobel Peace Prize awards for its peaceful and lawful campaigns to protect and defend all the known human rights all over this world. Click this web page now to know more about Amnesty International: http://www.amnesty.org . On the other hand, The One Campaign is an international organization that is peacefully and lawfully struggling to lessen the global impact of a disease called AIDS and, also, is currently involved in many programs that have been designed to lessen global poverty. Click this web page to know more about the One Campaign: http://one.org . Such humanitarian organizations need the support and donations of the righteous people of this world. Please make donations to such groups now. And, if you can, join such groups now and help make this world a better place for all human beings. Also, make this world a better place for plants and animals as well. I hope that someday all the technologies that humans would be using are environment-friendly. Thanks.

BEAUTIFUL PHILIPPINES!

MAJESTIC BAGUIO! LOVELY BORACAY!
The Philippines is really a beautiful country! Our country has a working democracy, friendly and nice people, and truly-wonderful natural sceneries. The Philippines is also a bastion of strong faith in holiness and goodness. I don't believe that the Philippines has a "rotten socio-political system"! I believe that democracy is really working in the Philippines. But it can not be denied that our country has some socio-political problems that come from a defective political-patronage system that hinders the further advancement of democracy in this nation. Our people have to gain a truly-meaningful, global and moral democracy in this country. Reforms, reforms, reforms! Socio-politcal reforms are necessary to renovate the Philippine political-electoral system and the political institutions that would make democracy in our country become truly-meaningful, global and moral to all the sectors of the Philippine society. And I believe that the Philippines has plenty of idealistic social reformers who will continue to struggle peacefully and lawfully to gain real, global and moral democracy for the Filipino people. Cheers for the Philippines! I love the Philippines!

SOME IDEAS FROM A VIEWER OF THIS BLOG!

I read a good work from one of the viewers of this blog. This message was written by Jeanette Bonifacio of the Ang KaSaMa group in the Philippines. Here is the message:

Gov’t subsidy of the electoral process! The reason you have a rotten society is because you have rotten leaders & a rotten system. In order to create a new society, you have to have a new system & new leaders. They have to create each other. Leaders have to create system and system have to create leaders. A system where we allow MONEY to dictate the destiny of a people is a highly-questionable system. Loose talks from some reliable sources point to the fact that since time immemorial nat’l campaign money comes from the host of illegal activities like jueteng, drug-syndicates, kidnap for ransom, bank robbery, etc. This is the main reason why this gov’t & all succeeding administrations will never be able to solve the drug-problem of this country. On the other hand, the Gov’t subsidy of the entire electoral process will immediately and effectively put a stop to the campaign-money coming from vested interest groups & illegal activities. This will make politicians & public officials become BEHOLDEN only to the gov’t. Big businesses’ control and monopoly over the political destination of this country by way of lucrative investments to favored politicians must end. If I may quote from the Phil. Daily Inquirer issue dated February15, 1992, from its Editorial entitled “Money and Politics”, last paragraph, which says “Until Congress passes a law subsiding the major candidates campaign for the president and other national posts, candidates and parties will have to think of creative ways of breaking the hold of money on Phil. Politics. If we are to have a real democracy, money must stop determining the outcome of elections.”Number 7, under Section 2 of Letter C on Commission on Election, Article IX on Constitutional Commission, defines the powers and functions exercised by Comelec under Section 2 to, (#7) Recommend to Congress effective measures to: 1. Minimize election spending 2. Limitation of places where propaganda materials are to be posted. 3. Prevent and penalize all forms of election frauds, offenses and malpractices. 4. Remove nuisance candidates. Perhaps one of the many challenges that faced Congress, hitherto, is that mandate in the Constitution, where Comelec in its exercise of its powers and functions (may) recommend to Congress effective measures to MINIMIZE ELECTION SPENDINGS!The ff. suggestions hope to dramatically minimize, if not entirely eliminate the role that money plays in the outcome of elections. To this end, bills may be filed in Congress precisely for this purpose: Shorten campaign period! Many candidates become sick because they have to cover the length and breadth of a certain constituency. Specific areas like barangay halls, plazas, basketball courts, etc. are places where meetings can be held. Aspirants should then be effectively discouraged from wasting their time, for example, using door to door contact. This is one of the main reasons why campaign periods take sometime. The more time spend to campaign, the more money is spent - e.g. let national campaign be done via multimedia - radio, newspaper& nationwide TV coverage like the impeachment trial or Comelec hour, w/out the candidates covering the length & breadth of the archipelago. Remove or eliminate the fiesta atmosphere as a traditional campaign strategy. Motorcades and lavish miting de avances which more often than not include expensive fireworks, entertainers, actors and actresses, celebrities, etc. must all be banned. In the words of P.R. Sarkar, “The farce of sham democracy has been likened to a puppet-show were power hungry politicians pull the strings from behind the scene.”Some so-called democracies" have reduced elections to mere popularly contests and survival of the fittest. Generally speaking, the traditional ways and approaches made by political demagogues, catering to people’s emotions and sentiments, to popularize themselves, in most cases, is primarily what is important to the people at large and to the “trapo” politicos as well. Entertainment, by and large, instead of the urgency of mass education, etc., becomes the name of the game. Society had degenerated to the point that the “MOB” is able to dictate even to the leaders of this country, to “seek and aspire for popularity”, rather than “righteousness and soul-searching”. All the education, issue-orientation, principles and ideology, and platforms of government, are all thrown in the dustbin of history. In fairness to the so-called MOB, deep inside them, they really want genuine change, for after all, their poverty is definitely beyond mere reform. Frankly speaking, all these posters everywhere, TV, radio and newspaper ads, motorcades and lavish star-studded miting de avances, etc:, don’t mean anything at all, as far as “Voters education is concerned!”In fact, many times over, they tend to becloud the issues, and inmore ways than one, MONEY, almost single handedly dictates the outcome of elections. At this point, may I state categorically, that there are basically three (3) ways to know a candidate: 1.) Educational attainment or credential 2.) Track record – in public office for re-electionists and NGO’s or private sector records for neophytes 3.) Platform of government- which contain among others: a.) plan of action (short, medium and long term) b.) vision of society- contains all the ideal features of what a candidate perceives to be an ideal society. And as a fierce advocate of Alternative Political and Electoral reform-programs, I've watched over the years with keen interest, precisely, reforms that maybe instituted by the Electoral Reform Committees of both the Senate and the House-and the result is that up to now, “zero-reform”, is their proud record of achievement! Again, in fairness to these brilliant lawmakers, particularly the heads of these committees, they saw no need for reforms, lest they “rock the boat”, so to speak…I rest my case...........